“Perhaps he loves you, my lady.” He said it softly like the suggestion from another world. The lady was silent, but he needed no other answer.
“Then indeed, the way would be even clearer,—were not his wife your sister.”
Kate looked at him, a half knowledge of his meaning beginning to dawn in her eyes.
“How?” she asked laconically.
“In case his wife should leave him do you think my lord would hold his head so high?”
Kate still looked puzzled.
“If some one else should win her affection, and should persuade her to leave a husband who did not love her, and who was bestowing his heart”—he hesitated an instant and his eye traveled significantly to the roll of bills still lying where David had left them—“and his gifts,” he hazarded, “upon another woman——”
Kate grasped the thought at once and an evil glint of eagerness showed in her eyes. She could see what an advantage it would be to herself to have Marcia removed from the situation. It would break one more cord of honor that bound David to a code which was hateful to her now, because its existence shamed her. Nevertheless, unscrupulous as she was she could not see how this was a possibility.
“But she is offensively good too,” she said as if answering her own thoughts.
“All goodness has its weak spot,” sneered the man. “If I mistake not you have found my lord’s. It is possible I might find his wife’s.”